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A car drove through a group of demonstrators in St. Louis on Wednesday. The driver was arrested.CreditDavid Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Polaris

With the car-ramming death of a protester in Charlottesville, Va., fresh in the nation’s mind, another car drove through a crowd of protesters who had taken over an intersection in St. Louis on Wednesday night, causing minor injuries to three people.

The incident occurred as a crowd gathered to protest the death of Kiwi Herring, 30, a transgender woman who was fatally shot by the police on Tuesday after slashing an officer with a knife, according to law enforcement authorities. Activists said they believed the police had used excessive force.

After attending a candlelight vigil for Ms. Herring on Wednesday night, dozens of demonstrators marched through St. Louis’s streets, at one point stopping in an intersection in the Grove neighborhood.

Videos posted to social media indicate that a car slowly approached the intersection, then inched through the crowd before accelerating. Photos by a St. Louis Post-Dispatch photographer show one activist on top of the car.

Accounts of what led to the confrontation vary. The police said in a statement that the driver tried to drive around the protesters before they surrounded the car and hit it with their hands and a flagpole, according to The Post-Dispatch. The statement said the three protesters were injured when they jumped on to the car and fell off as it drove away.

But activists said the driver initiated the confrontation. On Facebook, Keith Rose said the driver was “giving the middle finger” after he stopped just short of hitting protesters.

“He then began to drive forward, slowly hitting people,” the Facebook post read. “It was only once he was already hitting people and increasing his speed that people began to hit his car. He continued to drive faster, deeper into the crowd, turning to his left as he went.”

A witness said in an interview that the activists had hoped their vigil would ensure that the wider community knew about Ms. Herring’s death and about their questions over the police’s version of events.

After leaving the vigil, which was attended by about 100 people, the demonstrators chanted while walking through the streets. They stopped in the intersection seen in the video, and several cars turned around or found other routes when they saw the protesters there, said the witness, Jay-Marie Hill, 28.

When the car drove directly up to the activists, they perceived it as a threat, the witness said.

“People went around the car and said, ‘You need to turn around, this is a peaceful protest.’ ”

On Tuesday, at a news conference about Ms. Herring’s death, Lawrence O’Toole, the acting police commissioner of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, said officers arrived at a home shortly after 8 a.m. to find a person had been “severely cut.” The person identified Ms. Herring as the assailant, he said.

When an officer went to take Ms. Herring into custody, she slashed at that officer with a kitchen-type knife, hitting him on the arm, Mr. O’Toole said. The officer was treated at a hospital for a minor injury.